Nothing like
running to the plant nursery to get more plants after you miscount the
number needed to fill the entire planter bed. Now I just need to
fine the cheap cedarcide mulch to hold the mosquitos at bay long enough
for me to enjoy the evenings outside...

Say
What? Man with Ear Ache Gets Vasectomy

RIO DE
JANEIRO, Brazil - A Brazilian man who went to a clinic to have an aching
ear checked ended up having a vasectomy after mistakenly believing that
the doctor had called his name. A manager at the Doctor Jose Carlos de
Espirito Santo clinic in the town of Montes Claros in southeastern Minas
Gerais State said Valdemar Lopes de Moraes, 39, entered the vasectomy room
when Aldemar Aparecido Rodrigues' name was called. "He was called by the
full name and yet thought it was him. But the strangest thing is that he
asked no questions when the doctor started preparations in the area which
had so little to do with his ear," Vanessa Guimaraes said. "He later explained
that he thought it was an ear inflammation that got down to his testicles,"
she added. De Moraes, a farmer who has two children, did not want to reverse
the operation, performed last week, and showed up for an ear exam on Wednesday
at the same clinic. "A local newspaper said he is going to sue us, but
he did not tell us about any claims," Guimaraes said.

September
2

Image of
the Day

Nothing like a traditional
lamaze class to let you see how uneducated the reproducing population is.
Now why am I paying so much money just to sit next to another couple that
is having a kid and talk to them, I can do that for free on my own time. A
pink pig-nose Mercedes CDI diesel engine-propelled limousine is parked
by activists of the environment protection organization 'Greenpeace' opposite
the DymlerChrysler office in Berlin to protest against diesel engine emissions.
Greenpece protests the policy of German carmakers Volkswagen and DaimlerChrysler
for refusing to equip their diesel cars with proper emission filter systems.

September
3

Image of
the Day

I had a laser hair removal
treatement today. I decided it was time to finish this process and see
how the technology is coming along now that the price points have moved
down.A
tourist watches the Greek Presidential guards (Evzones) on duty outside
the Greek Parliament in central Athens.

September
4

Image of
the Day

A telescope was mounted
on top of a Volvo for the Mars Closet Approach Viewing Party on the lawn
of the Autry Museum of Western Heritage in Los Angeles. Mars will be closer
to the Earth this month than it has been in almost 60,000 years.

September
5

Image of
the Day

Although this was a short
work week I'm glad that it's friday and the weekend is here to be able
to catch up on lost sleep. Workers
remove a monument of the Ten Commandments from public view in the Alabama
Judicial Building in Montgomery, Alabama. The state's chief justice, Roy
Moore, installed the monument two years ago but federal courts ordered
it moved. Alabama Chief Justice Roy Moore was suspended by the Alabama
Judicial Inquiry Commission for failing to comply with the order.

September
6

Image of
the Day

Here's the giant chocolate
kiss of death...

September
7

Image of
the Day

This would be the prefect
"car" for the Belezian car, to allow you to island hop around, as long
as your tires had enough traction to pull you out of the sand along the
beaches.A
high-speed land and water vehicle drives on the River Thames. The Aquada
is designed to reach speeds of 100mph on land and over 30mph on water and
can switch between the two surfaces at the switch of a button. Gibbs Technologies,
who designed it, says that no other road-legal amphibian has managed to
exceed 6mph on water. The Aquada can hit speeds of 100 miles an hour
on land — and once it hits water, the wheels retract into the wheel arch,
jets kick in, and the car is suddenly a boat. With a sticker price
of about $235,000, the convertible has no doors in order to avoid leaks.
Drivers and passengers must jump over the side to get into the car — just
like a boat. "With this you can have a really good car on the road, and
an exciting toy that can tow a water skier, that you can commute to work
with, that you can go to St. Tropez with and take two girlfriends," the
firm's chairman Alan Gibbs told reporters at the car's test drive on London's
Thames. The car is part of the Aquada Bond series, but the company couldn't
say whether that is a veiled reference to James Bond and the sports-car-cum-submarine
that the superspy operated in the movie "The Spy Who Loved Me." The vehicle
can switch to cruising on water within seconds, and the drive mechanism
switches to power a jet that propels the vehicle, according to the company.
"The design requirements for the Aquada were daunting, but the technology
has delivered and demonstrates the quality of British engineering," said
Gibbs, a New Zealand entrepreneur who built his first fast amphibian vehicle
in 1995, before moving his company to Britain in 1999. He said the Aquada
was the product of a seven-year development program and 60 newly patented
technologies. One hundred of the cars are being built and will sell at
the end of this year.

September
8

Image of
the Day

Polly Roberts, a member
of the staff at auctioneers Lyon & Turnbull in Edinburgh, Scotland,
models a pair of Victorian ear trumpets made from papier mache and worn
like headphones, at the auction house. Ear trumpets were first used by
sailors in order to communicate over long distances, but experts are at
a loss to explain who would have used this 19th century rarity, which will
go up for sale later in September.

September
9

Image of
the Day

Square yeast doughnuts
are displayed on a tray at the Square Donut shop in Terre Haute, Ind. The
logic behind the doughnuts is that square doughnuts maximize the number
of pastries on a preparation tray.

September
10

Image of
the Day

Plugged In: Making
a Video Screen Out of Thin Air

In a museum in Tampere, Finland,
Ismo Rakkolainen's fog machine conjures up the Mona Lisa on an invisible
sheet of water particles. Thousands of miles away in Hermosa Beach, California,
a graduate student passes his hand through an image of a DNA strand produced
-- apparently out of thin air -- by a modified video projector. The two
inventions represent the latest front in advanced computer displays --
eliminating the screen altogether. While unlikely to replace the desktop
computer monitor, so-called walk-through displays could eventually be put
to use in product showrooms, museums, and military training facilities.
"This is something that people have been dreaming about for a long time,"
said Chad Dyner, 29, a graduate student at the Massachusetts Institute
of Technology and inventor of Heliodisplay, one of the prototype display
systems. "Ever since the movie 'Star Wars' came out and there was a distress
call from Princess Leia," -- generated in thin air by the robot R2D2 --
"people all over the world have been wanting one of these."
Dyner has disclosed few details about how his Heliodisplay works. The machine
modifies the air above a video projector, creating a working, 27-inch screen
that can display any kind of video. The image is two-dimensional, can be
seen from several angles, and can be manipulated by hand. The display is
less bold than a normal computer screen, Dyner admits, but he said he hopes
to bolster the image quality in future prototypes. Also, a bright light
shines in the eyes of viewers who get too close to the machine, a flaw
he said he knows how to remedy. Dyner has hired two former investment bankers
to find businesses that could use a Heliodisplay, and he has already received
inquiries from a large Japanese display company and the U.S. military,
not to mention 250,000 hits on his site http:/www.io2technology.com
In Finland, a device called the FogScreen has generated a lot of buzz,
and turned heads at this year's Siggraph, an industry conference on display
technologies. A popular Finnish mime has even integrated the FogScreen
into a performance. The FogScreen generates an image onto a cloud of water
vapor diffused into the air. Developed by two virtual reality researchers
at Tampere University of Technology in Finland, the FogScreen is being
marketed to companies that rent equipment to trade shows and other public
events. Mika Herpio, the chief executive of FogScreen, said his machine
could cost as much as $100,000, but that the price could drop in quantity
production. Advanced prototypes of the FogScreen have been built, and commercial
production is expected to start later this year. Many advanced display
technologies have impressed the public and yet failed to turn a profit.

September
11

Image of
the Day

Battery Park : Two
columns of light , known as the Tribute in Light Memorial, emanate into
the sky from Battery Park City to mark the second anniversary of the attacks
on September 11.

September
12

Image of
the Day

The days are approaching
of my cigarette-pack sized computer to be able to roam around in your back
pocket and maintain contact to the internet. Currie
Munce, vice president of research, Hitachi Global Storage Technologies
in San Jose, Calif., inspects a new 4 Gigabyte Microdrive. The world's
smallest hard disk drive weighs just 16 grams and is designed to store
large quantities of high-resolution digital photos and video, MP3 music,
electronic games and other large files. It can store a full-length DVD
movie or about 75 hours of high-quality digital music. The matchbook-sized
drive features breakthroughs in capacity and performance.

September
13

Image of
the Day

A child wearing 'kai
dang ku,' or open crotch pants, runs to his mother along a sidewalk in
Beijing. Rising incomes and more sophisticated lifestyles in Asia's fastest-growing
economy have fueled the growing popularity of disposable diapers - a far
less rustic alternative - in big cities. In Beijing, China's capital, bare
baby bottoms are an increasingly rare sight - even on the sultry summer
afternoons, when kai dang ku were almost a uniform for toddlers a few years
ago.

September
14

Image of
the Day

An undated handout
photograph shows an Italian Maiolica plate, provided by the Ashmolean Museum
in Oxford on Thursday. A leading museum has paid 240,000 pounds for a plate
which shows a portrait of a man whose head is made up entirely of penises.
It is thought to have been made by Italian Renaissance ceramicist Francesco
Urbini in the 16th century. The head is framed by a garland carrying the
inscription: Ogni homo me guarda come fosse una testa de cazi (Every man
looks at me as if I were a dickhead).

September
15

Image of
the Day

Unequal pay makes monkeys go ape

Monkeys, like humans, are acutely
aware of injustice, which suggests that a sense of equality is an ancestral
trait among primates, a study says. In an unusual two-year experiment,
animal behaviourists Sarah Brosnan and Frans de Waal of Emory University
in Atlanta, Georgia, taught brown capuchin monkeys to receive tokens as
a reward, and to barter them for food. The monkeys were usually quite content
to swap the tokens for cucumber, but if the researchers gave one of the
monkeys a grape, a more eagerly-sought food, the other animals would become
jealous. Some of them refused to hand over their tokens. Others would still
exchange their token for the cucumber, but scornfully decline to eat it.
If the monkey which got the grape had received the coveted fruit for not
doing anything, its colleagues often became incensed.
"People judge fairness based both on the distribution of gains and on the
possible alternatives to a given outcome," Brosnan and de Waal write in
Thursday's issue of Nature, the British science weekly."Capuchin monkeys, too,
seem to measure reward in relative terms, comparing their own rewards with
those available, and their own efforts with those of others. "They respond
negatively to previously acceptable rewards if a partner gets a better
deal." The pleasure of reward and anger at unfair treatment are known factors
behind the human social hierarchy and cooperation. This evidence suggests
the same may be true among non-human primates, they say.

September
16

Image of
the Day

Ancient Amazon Settlements
Uncovered

The Amazon River basin was not
all a pristine, untouched wilderness before Columbus came to the Americas,
as was once believed. Researchers have uncovered clusters of extensive
settlements linked by wide roads with other communities and surrounded
by agricultural developments. The researchers, including some descendants
of pre-Columbian tribes that lived along the Amazon, have found evidence
of densely settled, well-organized communities with roads, moats and bridges
in the Upper Xingu part of the vast tropical region. Michael J. Heckenberger,
first author of the study appearing this week in the journal Science, said
that the ancestors of the Kuikuro people in the Amazon basin had a "complex
and sophisticated" civilization with a population of many thousands during
the period before 1492. "These people were not the small mobile bands or
simple dispersed populations" that some earlier studies had suggested,
he said.Instead, the people demonstrated
sophisticated levels of engineering, planning, cooperation and architecture
in carving out of the tropical rain forest a system of interconnected villages
and towns making up a widespread culture based on farming.
Heckenberger said the society that lived in the Amazon before Columbus
were overlooked by experts because they did not build the massive cities
and pyramids and other structures common to the Mayans, Aztecs and other
pre-Columbian societies in South America. Instead, they built towns, villages
and smaller hamlets all laced together by precisely designed roads, some
more than 50 yards across, that went in straight lines from one point to
another. "They were not organized in cities," Heckenberger said. "There
was a different pattern of small settlements, but they were all tightly
integrated. He said the population in one village and town complex was
2,500 to 5,000 people, but that could be just one of many complexes in
the Amazon region. "All the roads were positioned according to the same
angles and they formed a grid throughout the region," he said. Only a small
part of these roads has been uncovered and it is uncertain how far the
roads extend, but the area studied by his group is a grid 15 miles by 15
miles, he said.Heckenberger
said the people did not build with stone, as did the Mayas, but made tools
and other equipment of wood and bone. Such materials quickly deteriorate
in the tropical forest, unlike more durable stone structures. Building
stones were not readily available along the Amazon, he said. He said the
Amazon people moved huge amounts of dirt to build roads and plazas. At
one place, there is evidence that they even built a bridge spanning a major
river. The people also altered the natural forest, planting and maintaining
orchards and agricultural fields and the effects of this stewardship can
still be seen today, Heckenberger said. Diseases such as smallpox and measles,
brought to the new world by European explorers, are thought to have wiped
out most of the population along the Amazon, he said. By the time scientists
began studying the indigenous people, the population was sparse and far
flung. As a result, some researchers assumed that that was the way it was
prior to Columbus. The new studies, Heckenberger said, show that the Amazon
basin once was the center of a stable, well-coordinated and sophisticated
society.

September
17

Image of
the Day

Haunsy, a dachshund,
pulls his own float while marching in the 46th Annual German-American Steuben
Parade on Fifth Avenue in New York. The parade is part of the celebration
of German-American friendship week and recognizes the significant contributions
of German-Americans to the development of the United States.

September
18

Image of
the Day

A stairway that formerly
led to a beachfront home's deck is all that remains after Hurricane Isabel
struck South Nags Head on the Outer Banks of North Carolina. Up to 13 people
have perished and 4.5 million homes and business are without power from
the Carolinas to New York in Isabel's wake.

September
19

Image of
the Day

A Somali truck loaded
with corn is parked on the side of a road in Mogadishu. The delapidated
city is the capital of the failed Horn of Africa state, where motorists
have the choice of driving on the right or the left hand side of the road,
such is Mogadishu's anarchy. Car wrecks, goats, cattle and the tent-like
homes of refugees line the pot-holed, sandy streets. The country collapsed
into chaos in 1991 after the ousting of former dictator Mohamed Siad Barre.

September
20

Image of
the Day

President of the United
States George W. Bush as King of Diamonds is part of a card deck depicting
'the 52 most dangerous American officials', sold by the French group Reseau
Voltaire (Voltaire Network). Caption under photograph reads : 'Head of
a baseball club and director of Salem bin Laden's oil company (brother
of Osama). Designated President of the United States by friends of his
father at the Supreme Court before the vote count showed that he lost the
elections'. A little over 2, 500 decks have been sold on the internet in
recent weeks.

September
21

Image of
the Day

Mr. Jeffries, a Bassett
hound who is the dog with the largest ears in the world, stands with his
ears outstretched. Mr. Jeffries, whose ears measured 11.5 inches and are
insured for $49,476, lives with his owner Phil Jeffries in Southwick, West
Sussex in southern England.

September
22

Image of
the Day

One of a pack of Russian
playing cards of leading US political figures shows US President George
W. Bush as the jack of hearts. A Russian newspaper has trumped the United
States government with playing cards featuring top US politicians, a take
off the Iraqi most wanted decks issued during the Iraq war earlier this
year.

September
23

Image of
the Day

A stuffed 'almiqui', an
insectivore native to Cuba , is presented by a worker, for a photo opportunity
at the Cuban Museum of Natural Science on in Havana, Cuba. A living example
of the insectivore -believed for years to be extinct- has been found in
the island's eastern mountains, a Cuban news agency reported. The last
reported sightings of the creatures were in 1972 in the eastern province
of Guantanamo, and 25 years later in 1999 in the eastern province of Holguin.

September
24

Image of
the Day

A Gaetice depressus,
right, and its exuviae seem smiling in this photo from Toba Aquarium in
Toba, Mie prefecture, western Japan. An 8-year-old boy picked the Gaetice
depressus with about 1.5 cm shell when he went digging for clams at a beach
in the prefecture and brought it to the aquarium. Employees at the aquarium
doubted first that it was drawn by permanent marker but kept it. Even after
the Gaetice depressus exuviated on Sept. 21, 2003, it still has the pattern
like smiling clearly and it was proved that the pattern is by nature. The
aquarium opened it to public.

September
25

Image of
the Day

A Russian boy runs
inside a sphere on the river Neva during 'Walks on Neva River' event in
St Petersburg. The walks on the Neva River were organised as part of the
300th anniversary celebrations of the Russia's second biggest city St.Petersburg.

September
26

Image of
the Day

So does this increase my odds of getting to 125? Saw
the movie the Rundown this evening. Overall a decent movie, reminds
me of some of the early Arnold Schwarzenegger movies. Lots
of action with short lines and little dialogue or character development.
I would give this movie a 7.5/10, for being entertaining but little originality
in the plotline or location.The
world's oldest man, retired Japanese silkworm breeder Yukichi Chuganji,
died in his home at the age of 114, local government officials said. Chuganji
is shown at his home in Fukuoka, southern Japan. Kyushu is also home
to the world's oldest person, a 116-year-old woman named Kamato Hongo.
Japan has the world's longest life expectancy. Researchers say the country's
traditional fish-based, lowfat diet may be the secret to the country's
longevity.

September
27

Image of
the Day

Spent the day relaxing around the house and enjoyed sleeping
in a few extra minutes for a change. Tried the restaurant Beso that
recently changed from Bevo for Kris's 24th birthday dinner.

TV on a T-shirt, fabric displays glowing, changing
images.

Optical-fibre fabric should
open new horizons for fashion designers. Seen the movie, got the T-shirt?
Soon T-shirts might not just advertise movies but show them. Researchers
at France Telecom have developed a fabric woven from plastic optical fibres
that glow with a series of different images, like a TV screen. It could
mean never again being stuck wearing the same outfit as someone else at
a party - you could use a mobile phone to download a whole new look into
the fabric from a computerized database. The battery-powered optical-fibre
fabric should "open new horizons for fashion designers," say its developers
Emmanuel Deflin and co-workers of France Telecom in Meylan. In a more practical
vein, they suggest that fire-fighters or police could wear clothing programmed
to display safety or warning information visible from afar. So far the
team has made a jacket containing a very low-resolution grid of eight by
eight pixels, which displays crude yet readable symbols such as numbers.
Switchable textiles have been made before from different light-emission
devices. In principle, flexible and fully pixellated screens could be imprinted
onto fabrics using plastic light-emitting diodes (LEDs), for example. But
fibre-optics are tough, cheap and easy to adapt to existing fabric-weaving
technology. Showing real movies on this fabric is, in truth, still remote.
A TV or monitor screen contains a grid of pixels that can be lit up or
left dark. Each fibre-optic thread in the fabric provides an entire row
of pixels that can be configured in only one way. The row can be set up
to contain some unlit and some lit sections when switched on, but that
predetermined pattern can't be changed. The threads are optical fibres
that leak light. For a screen capable of supporting several different images,
therefore, a different thread must supply each different configuration
of light and dark patches in a row of pixels. This is not quite as limiting
as it sounds, because the fibre-optic threads are little thicker than a
human hair at about a quarter of a millimetre across.
The screen could support four distinct patterns, for example, by selecting
one of four strands for each line of the image. The glow from each bright
part of a strand spreads out enough that, from a distance, the intervening
dark strands are barely visible. Primitive moving images can be made by
rapidly switching between several such pre-set pictures. The threads are
optical fibres that leak light along the sections that need to glow. Normal
optical fibres trap light inside, so that they look transparent from the
side but glow at the far end where the light emerges. A French company
called Audio Images has developed a way to perforate optical fibres with
tiny holes that allow some of the light to escape sideways. Each section
of a fibre then glows when light is fed into one end. Deflin's team uses
plastic fibres, which are stronger than the glass fibres used for telecommunications.
Light is fed into the fibres by tiny LEDs along the edge of the display
panel and controlled by a small microchip. LEDs of different colours can
be used for multicoloured images.

September
28

Image of
the Day

Nothing like working on your day off, spent the afternoon
and evening creating a pictoral tracing diagrahm and digging through numbers.
Since when does the state have a moral or legal obligation to force treatment
on a minor?

State Won't Order Cancer Treatment for Boy

Utah officials have backed off
trying to require a boy diagnosed with terminal cancer to undergo chemotherapy,
though a juvenile court judge could still order the treatment. The state
also is no longer seeking to take Parker Jensen, 12, from his parents,
Daren and Barbara Jensen, who fled the state with their son. The Jensens
have said they fear the treatment would stunt Parker's growth and leave
him sterile. Because of his parents' fierce resistance to chemotherapy
- recommended by at least four doctors — Parker probably wouldn't
benefit from the treatment because of his unreceptive psychological state,
said Carol Sisco, a spokeswoman for the Division of Children and Family
Services.
The boy's court-appointed attorney in the custody dispute also relented.
"My client's been placed in a position where it's almost untenable for
him to get medical treatment," said Mollie McDonald. Daren Jensen said
he is skeptical of the state's intentions and reiterated his desire to
be in charge of his son's medical treatment, according to Tuesday editions
of The Salt Lake Tribune. "It is time for the parents to take control and
move forward," he said. The Jensens want to pursue alternative treatments
for Parker, diagnosed earlier this year with Ewing's sarcoma. They fled
Utah in August after the state ordered them to relinquish custody to the
state so he could receive chemotherapy. They were charged with kidnapping
but later surrendered.
In exchange for keeping Parker, the parents agreed to a new round of tests
by an Idaho oncologist, Dr. Martin Johnston, and to abide by his treatment
recommendation.
Johnston recommended an 11-month regimen of chemotherapy, but the Jensens
maintain new tests do not show signs of cancer in Parker's body. "They
agreed in court that they would follow the doctor's recommendations. They've
now said they won't do that. So what can we do?" Sisco said. "Do we take
him in custody and force him into chemotherapy? We just don't think that
will work." Daren Jensen told that newspaper that he and his wife have
not violated the legal agreement. The Jensens have said they felt coerced
to sign the agreement. "We just told them we would never be happy, nor
be convinced that what they were doing was right. We never said we would
not comply," he told the newspapers. Juvenile Court Judge Robert Yeates
is scheduled to consider the status of the case, including Parker's treatment
and the Jensens' agreement, at an Oct. 8 hearing.State kidnapping charges
also are pending against the Jensens, who remain free on their own recognizance.

A sculpture by artist Anish Kapoor

September
29

Image of
the Day

Slim screen can be rolled but not folded

Ultra-thin display brings e-newspapers
a step closer. The e-paper has a resolution of 96 dpi - slightly higher
than that of a computer monitor. One newspaper that updates itself with
the latest headlines every day - that's the vision of US researchers who
have unveiled an ultra-thin electronic-ink display screen. The screen is
less than 0.3 millimetres thick, flexible enough to be rolled into a tube
just 4 mm across and can be viewed from almost any angle. This is good,
but not quite good enough for an e-newspaper, admits one of the device's
creators, Yu Chen of the E Ink Corporation in Cambridge, Massachusetts:
the display is still too thick to be folded in two. The screen uses an
electronic network called a thin-film transistor array. This can supply
opposing voltages to different areas of the display. On top of the array
is a conducting layer containing millions of tiny capsules of charge-sensitive
pigment - some black, some white.A
negative voltage moves the white particles to the surface; a positive one
brings black ones to the fore, creating an effect like print on a page.
The pattern remains for around 10 minutes after the voltages are removed,
making this a cheaper alternative to other electronic displays. Similar
technology could even make clothes that double as video screens. This would
need a display that refreshed itself every 15 milliseconds. The new screen
currently takes around a quarter of a second. "The main challenge is to
increase the speed - I think it's very doable," Chen says.

September
30

Image of
the Day

LCD paint - Walls and curtains could sport liquid-crystal
digital displays.One layer LCDs could lead
to smaller, cheaper, lighter gadgets. Homes of the future could change
their wallpaper from cream to cornflower blue at the touch of a button,
says Dirk Broer. His team has developed paint-on liquid crystal displays
(LCDs) that offer the technology. Liquid crystals are peculiar liquids:
their molecules spontaneously line up, rather than being randomly orientated
as in a normal liquid. Passing a voltage across the molecules switches
their alignment, blocking the transmission of light so a display changes
from light to dark. Current LCDs on digital watches, mobile phones and
laptops sandwich the crystal between heavy glass plates. The complicated
production process is time-consuming, expensive and restricts the size
of screens to just 1 metre square. Broer and his colleagues have devised
a new open-sandwich technique that instead deposits a layer of liquid crystal
onto a single underlying sheet. Working at Eindhoven University of Technology
and Philips Research Laboratories in the Netherlands, Broer's team has
already produced prototypes on glass and plastic; fabric could be next.
The technique could create giant TV screens, digital billboards and walls
that change colour. Slim, plastic LCDs sewn into fabric could display e-mail
or text messages on your sleeve. "It depends what future societies want,"
says Broer. The technique should feed people's thirst for smaller,
cheaper gadgets. Conventional glass LCDs now make up an increasing part
of a laptop's weight - plastic versions could change that, says Peter Raynes,
who studies LCD technology at the University of Oxford, UK.
Broer's team made the LCD paint by mixing liquid crystal with molecules
that link together into a rigid polymer when exposed to ultraviolet. In
a two-stage process they effectively build tiny boxes holding the liquid.
Don't expect to buy a watch featuring one of the new displays in the next
six months. They coat a glass or plastic base with a thin layer of
the LCD paint and mask out squares so that a blast of ultraviolet forms
a grid of walls. When they remove the mask, a second exposure - at a wavelength
that does not penetrate the whole liquid layer - seals over the boxes with
a lid. Standard LCDs, which are divided up into pixels, turn dark when
a voltage crosses between electrodes on the two glass plates. The new displays
instead pass voltage between two points on the same plate. Colour LCDs
fit each pixel with red, green and blue colour filters. He cautions that
the technique needs work: compared with glass, the thin outer layer may
be more easily penetrated by oxygen or water that degrade the crystal.